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Release date: October 15, 2018

Genre: Fiction

Blurb:

How desperate are you to get the one you love?

When Hannah and Ben meet at a friend’s party, he knows she’s The One. But Hannah’s in an intense relationship with Mark and planning to return to her native Sweden to embark on a teaching career.

Desperate to make Ben fall in love with her, rich spoilt heiress Vanessa sets in motion a devious string of events that ultimately changes the course of four people’s lives indefinitely.

Hannah is the love of Ben’s life, yet Vanessa will stop at nothing to claim the man she is convinced is her destiny.

Because of You is a dark, morally complex and cross-generational story of enduring love, fate and destiny.  

Review:

I haven’t read a good, epic story of a life in way too long and I hadn’t realized how much I’ve missed them until I started reading Because of You. It was so completely different from the books I’ve been drawn to as of late. It was an emotional, yet sometimes dark journey alongside Hannah Stein. The novel follows her during the majority of her adult life,  and the reader experiences all the highs and lows of her life right beside her.

It begins when Hannah is just a teenager getting ready to move from her home to London for a gap year. It seems from the start that she’s led a charmed life, she has doting and kind parents and a good relationship with her brother, Peter. Hannah comes across a bit sheltered and pampered in the beginning, and I found myself wondering just how much I would be able to relate to her. I shouldn’t have worried because as the story progresses and Hannah matures, she becomes a woman that practically anyone could relate to. 

I’m reticent to reveal too much about the plot as I really enjoyed going along with Hannah on her journey. She experiences so much throughout her life, and Fermont is not afraid to discuss difficult subject matter. There is divorce, death, grief, loss, epic love, pain, heartbreak, rape, abuse, illness, honestly anything you can imagine that a person may experience in their lifetime. This book had such a genuine and authentic feeling to it and I think it’s partly because all the situations Hannah has to endure are ones that many people have gone through themselves. 

Besides Hannah, there is a wide variety of characters, some you will fall in love with and adore, and others that you will hate. Again, this is no different than the types of people we all encounter in our lives, making it all the more relatable. Since it spans decades of her life, she meets a varied and colorful cast of characters along her way.

I was very invested in Hannah’s life and eager to see where she would end up. As much as I wanted to see how it would end, I was sad to say goodbye to Hannah and her friends and family when it was all over. This is a story of love, friendship and family. A story of one woman’s fascinating life experiences and how she copes with all the pain and loss that comes with simply living life. 

Overall rating: 4/5